Horana People's Bank Rs. 35 Million ATM Robbery - Assistant Manager's Involvement - A Portion of Money Recovered

An incident was recently reported where an unknown individual robbed and fled with three and a half crore rupees (35 million rupees) that was prepared for transport from a People's Bank branch in Horana town to ATMs and other branch service centers, and it is now being revealed that this theft was an inside job at the bank.

The robbery occurred between 2:45 PM and 2:55 PM on the 3rd of last month. An assistant manager of the bank was carrying this money, in five thousand rupee notes, packed in two light cream-colored cloth bags with the bank's logo, towards a car parked outside the back entrance when this incident occurred. While the security officer responsible for cash transport was signing a logbook inside the bank, a single individual who arrived on foot suddenly acted, snatched the two bags of money, and fled, according to information provided to the police by the bank.

After the security officers informed the bank manager about the incident, he immediately acted and notified the 119 Police Emergency Call Unit. Although the process of withdrawing money from the bank's vault was recorded on CCTV cameras, the lack of CCTV coverage at the back entrance or its surrounding area, as well as the absence of any recording of the person fleeing with the money on nearby cameras, led the police to strongly suspect that this was a planned robbery carried out based on an internal tip-off or with the involvement of bank employees.

Investigations into this large-scale cash robbery have been handed over to the Western Province North Criminal Investigation Division by order of Inspector General of Police Priyantha Weerasuriya. Accordingly, the assistant manager in charge of the money and the security officer were taken to Colombo for further questioning, and based on the information received, it was revealed that both of them had committed this fraud, leading to their arrest by the police.

Seventeen million rupees (17 million) were recovered from one of the suspects, and additionally, another 1.7 million rupees of unidentified money was found by investigating officers in a bank storage room. Extensive police investigations are currently underway by the Western Province North Criminal Investigation Division to determine if there is any connection between the robbed money and the money found in the storage room.